


Ashes and Embers (The Reylo Triptych)

by rey_sith_stance



Series: The Reylo Triptych [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Based on the Colin Trevorrow's Screenplay for IX, Colin Trevorrow Script, Dominant Kylo Ren, Duel of the Fates, Duel of the Fates (Unfilmed Screenplay), F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Glove Kink, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Kylo Ren Redemption, Mortis (Star Wars), Mustafar (Star Wars), Not Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Oral Sex, POV Kylo Ren, POV Rey (Star Wars), Porn with Feelings, Possessive Kylo Ren, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Size Kink, Smut, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, Submissive Rey (Star Wars), That's Not How The Force Works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:40:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23532469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rey_sith_stance/pseuds/rey_sith_stance
Summary: His control flickers.  Did he think he could contain her?  Contain himself?  When he holds this much power?
Relationships: Kylo Ren & Rey, Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: The Reylo Triptych [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1691389
Comments: 4
Kudos: 69





	Ashes and Embers (The Reylo Triptych)

**Author's Note:**

> Based on Colin Trevorrow's leaked script for Star Wars IX : Duel of the Fates. In the Trevorrow screenplay, Kylo uses a Sith holocron discovered on Mustafar to locate Tor Valum: the ancient creature who tutored Palpatine in the Force. Valum teaches Kylo how to extract the Force from other beings and this become significant when he and Rey have their final battle on Mortis (a realm or planet previously seen in the Clone Wars animated series). 
> 
> Much of the reporting on the Trevorrow script claims Kylo dies un-redeemed in that version--but Trevorrow confirmed on Twitter that this is incorrect. Our tragic hero/anti-hero dies, the script reveals, "with the light in his eyes" wearing a "look that could be described as love." 
> 
> Also significant to this fic: Duel of the Fates Kylo reveals that Rey's family name is "Solana" (a Spanish word that means "the sunny side of a mount or valley").

Ashes and Embers

The Reylo Triptych

The air on Mustafar smells of brimstone. Rey can taste the ashes of the ever-erupting volcanoes. A group of colonists, she’s heard, recently tried to terra-form the planet, working themselves to the bone to tame its convulsions, but their efforts came to nothing in the end but death and wholesale abandonment. Somewhere below her are all that remain of their efforts: stunted trees crabbing the dissolving terrain of the ash fields. The lava seeps on, intractable, lapping the base of the Sith citadel before her.

_No wonder Vader wore a helmet,_ she thinks—adjusting her respirator mask as she steps clear of the _Falcon_. They say Lord Vader’s lungs were stunted after the battle with his Master, but if that really happened—and on this very planet—Rey thinks the air probably had more to do with it. The hot-ember glow from the ravines below the castle tinge the various noxious vapors yellow. How anyone could have fought a lightsaber duel in these conditions without respirators or proper armor…

It makes her head hurt just thinking about it. 

She hopes her own duel will take place indoors.

She pads quickly across the rampway that connects the landing pad with the portcullis of the Sith keep. Lava pulses and explodes in the depths of the ravines and the hot wind buffets her like fists. At the best of times, Mustafar’s weather is foul, but it seems to be putting on a special show. The ground too rumbles under her feet like some terrible beast shifting in discontent. By the time she reaches the pneumatic doors—tall, glassy slits that chomp open and shut to greet her—her heart has joined in the unsettling rhythm, accompanying its bass pounding in an anxious counterpoint. Her breath hisses shallowly through her breathing apparatus. Seldom has she felt so relieved to get inside.

The entry doors are malfunctioning, moving back and forth with a frustrated _swicking_ sound. Rey waits until she’d traversed the long obsidian entry hall—a windowed arm spanning another lava-seam—before she lowers her mask. She leaves the device on a ledge where she can grab it in a hurry and ducks through a—thankfully _working_ — side door. It closes behind her with a pleasant rush of air: cool and controlled, only vaguely smoky. The smell of burned embers fades and cools as she steals into the heart of the abandoned fortress.

_Where are you?_ she thinks, slipping her saber into her hands. 

His thought comes from a distance. 

_Come and see._

_###_

It feels like hours, but is probably only half-one, before the bond flickers, telling her is close. Not that he isn’t always in her head, but something different happens when it comes to physical proximity. At a distance Rey can block him out, erect a wall as impenetrable as durasteel—but as her feet lead her on, his Force signature flickers—eerie and tangible as the vapors she’s so recently fled. This part of the castle feels haunted by him. He’s tucked away somewhere like a tick in warm flesh. That doesn’t mean he’s standing still, though. 

She begins to listen for his footfalls in the dark.

The rooms she passes are cavernous, gleaming. Every surface a polished, mirrorlike, black. Rectangular arches break up the monotony, leading off into enclosed courtyards of glass and steel. All the rooms to the right of her have tall windows, many spanning entire walls. They gaze out on a sky the color of rubies. The light deepening. Night falling over blasted mountains.

She comes to the end of a long, cavernous hallway with two enormous, sky-high doors. An exhalation of heat brushes her face. Firelight crackles between their gap. This is it. Where he’s gone to ground. Where he’s sent out all those cryptic, tantalizing messages.

_Meet me on Mustafar,_ he’s said. _I have something you need to hear._

Why she believes him, only the Force knows.

She takes a deep breath and kicks to doors open.

###

Kylo is standing before the fireplace—a huge yawning thing half as wide—and as tall—as the room. A stateroom of in Old Republic style, with low comfortable couches, and an enormous bed. All black, of course—or a kind of crushed purple. Surely Vader, maybe Palpatine himself, stayed here. Not the venue she’d have chosen for a battle, but then, Kylo is nothing if not complicated.

His back is to her as she enters. Same wide shoulders, same dark fall of hair. When he turns, though, she feels her stomach drop. His unusual features are crystal clear. No trace of the scar she gave to him on Starkiller. Somehow, he has healed himself.

All the rumors she’s been hearing the last three years come winging back like a murder of crows: 

That he found a dark teacher, travelled the unknown regions That he’s grown more powerful with the Dark Side of the Force.

The heir of Vader, people whisper.

The Young Emperor.

The Lord of Ren.

Rey swallows, throat suddenly longing for water as whatever had been cloaking his Force signature vanishes. A disturbance rushes across their bond. The pressure plunges in her ears as a _presence_ fills the room. It’s as if the shadows are growing before her eyes; as if some huge, dark bird is soaring upward. 

“Ben,” she says, awestruck and unsettled. But he doesn’t even twitch at the familiar jab.

“Rey,” he whispers. “Rey Solana. I wanted to tell you: I found _your_ name.”

###

Kylo has waited a very long time to see his rival so utterly gobsmacked. He waits patiently as the revelation sinks into her, her pretty face going unfocused and softly pained. If he still had a heart he would feel for her, the way he used to feel when she’d torture him with _his_ name. But Ben Solo is dead. Even Kylo Ren is dead. What he is now has never been seen before.

“That’s…” Rey manages. “How would _you_ know?” _And why_ , her unspoken thought asks, _would you tell me?_

“I saw it,” Kylo says. He’s had it from his Master. The creature he so recently killed. The entity that called itself Tor Valum had claimed to have taught Darth Sidious himself. It had ended Kylo’s training with a prophetic vision. And Kylo had promptly ended _it_.

He flicks this thought across the bond, curious to see what she’ll do with it. The brief flashes—the awful creature, rising spiderlike from its ruins, the punishments Kylo took both before and after --are a tale so dark and visceral that Rey actually retreats a step. Almost, she drops her lightsaber. She hasn’t activated it yet. She’s not going to. Kylo will make sure of that. He’s planned this encounter in detail.

He can feel her mind spinning as she absorbs what he’s given her, as she traces the whole mad saga from its roots. The Sith holocron he discovered in this very castle had led him to Valum, which led him to the truth. The vision he had at the end of his training told him where he must go to win this war. It also said that _she_ must be there with him—and the best way to make her follow was to give her—

“My name.” She blinks at him. Her eyes are a honeyed brown color made luminous in the firelight. She’s changed a little in the last three years. A little harder. A little more poised. But she’s still the same woman he hates and desires, and time has only sharpened his terrible longing. 

“Drop the saber, Rey,” he says softly. She’s trying to figure out his motives—but they’re as simple as dirt. He lets her feel them for a moment, across the bond, before a flick of his wrist pulls the saber from her hand. She watches it go with amazement—and then horror when she realizes: she can’t retaliate. When she seizes the Force Kylo does what his teacher taught him. He pulls the Light inside him and takes it as his own.

Rey staggers. He’s only stolen a little. Just a sip, you might say, from the chalice that is her. Yet his heart slams wildly against his ribs and he can tell he’s left her similarly disoriented. Not that it even slows her down. She seizes the Force again and calls her saber to her. It spins from its exile—singeing the ends of his hair as he ducks--and explodes behind him in a hail of sparks. He hears the crack of the kyber crystal breaking. That must hurt. Each one of those crystals is special. Every Sith, every Jedi, must find the right one, be bonded with it in order to forge their weapon. 

Rey doesn’t stop. He’s not surprised. Her stubborn determination is part of what he loves about her. She rushes him in a gravity-defying attack, Force-be-damned as she slams a leg into his stomach. When he tries to fling her off, she hammers him with her fists and they grapple viciously, her elbow landing a numbing jab between his shoulders.

His control flickers. Did he think he could contain her? Contain himself? When he holds this much power? He steals her Light again to ease his back, then sweeps towards her, the Force knocking her across the room. She keeps her feet until the very edge of the bed—that low-lying antique in its ebony frame—and then it’s only his fingers, fisted in her shirt, that keeps her upright as he towers over her.

“We have to go to Mortis,” he says as she fights him, struggling against him as he lifts her on her toes. 

“Mortis is a myth!” She kicks him. “Why would that…realm…reveal itself to you?” The contempt in her voice hurts more than the violence. But she’s wrong if she thinks Ben Solo is still inside him somewhere. He isn’t. And soon, Kylo will be so much more. On Mortis he will claim the Well of the Force.

Rey catches his thought.

_That’s right,_ he thinks at her. With the Living Force coursing through him the galaxy will be his. He’ll shape entire worlds to his will. And every wretched little soul that cowers within them.

“Like…a god?” Rey’s hitching breath pushes her breasts against his fingers—the ones still knotted in her wrap. That filmy, over-complicated thing. He’d like to tear it off her and throw it in the fire.

“You’re going to fight me for it,” he says. “That’s your destiny. Kill me or…”

“Or?”

“I win.”

“Why are you doing this, then?” she hisses. Her struggle—her defiance—makes him ache. His breath goes shallow as tear runs down her face to the corner of her infinitely kissable mouth. “Why give me my name if you’re going to kill me? Or worse? You kriffing son of a bi—”

He does kiss her then. Not gently. It’s a snarl. An invasion. Filling her mouth with his tongue. She still fights him, so he grips her by the hair, wrenches her neck back so he can kiss her deeper, harder.

“I’m going to make you _weak_ ,” he says. “I’m going to drain you dry and leave you here. And when I come back I’m going to turn you to the Dark Side. With all that power I can finally end our pain.”

“ _Our_ pain?” Her puzzlement beggars belief. Can she not know? This girl that the world threw away? The only difference between the two of them is that Kylo knew his parents before they disposed of him like so much trash. 

“We’ve never _belonged_.” His mouth is near her. “You belonged so little, the world forgot your _name_. But I’ll end it, Rey. I’ll beat you to Mortis. You’ve lost the war already even if you don’t know how.”

He reaches into her with the Force, pulling the Light to him, making her limbs go soft. Not enough to kill her. Just enough to tip the balance. They’re even in power. This is a necessary trick. A dirty one. Vile even for his purposes. He waits to feel her hate of him flow through their bond…

Instead she gives a little cry, eyes closed, back arching as if in pleasure. Then her grip hardens as she shoves him backwards and, as he staggers, she strikes him across the face.

Kylo’s head rings like a bell. Hot blood fills his cheek and travels, tingling, down his neck. He looks at her through a tangle of deranged black hair, rage—and all the power he’s taken—gathering. Oh, he’s going to hurt her for this. His whole body goes hard with lust and power…

But before he can charge her she holds up a palm.

“Stop,” she says. “That’s…just _stay_.”

She sways tipsily, watching him, watching her.

Then she straightens and starts to take off her clothes.

Kylo’s breath (which he’s been holding like he’s underwater) hisses out in a trembling sigh. 

_There’s other ways to weaken someone_ , she tells him. Her thought is thready but clearly her fires have survived. The next thing he knows she’s undressing for him, sliding wrappings and bindings off an item at a time.

The leather belt with its cross-strap goes first, clatters to the ground with a sound like loosed chains. Next is the blaster holster on her thigh—conspicuously empty. It wouldn’t have done her any good anyway. The sheer wrappings she favors loosen and drape, then unwind and pool in diaphanous coils. She steps over them and then toes off her shoes, wriggles her dainty white feet on the carpet. Then all that remains are her top and the leggings, both of which hug her like a second skin. 

She pauses. Kylo can hear her strained breath. Her eyelashes lower as she gathers herself. Her mouth moves in some silent Jedi manta—but she doesn’t reach for the Force. He knows she won’t. 

“All right, then,” she whispers. “All right.”

She pulls her shirt off and tosses it on the floor.

Kylo, still wearing his accustomed gloves, hears the leather creak as his fists clench. Her breasts are small and flawlessly smooth. The firelight limns every curve in gold. 

She strips the leggings down. Hooks her fingers through her panties. They whisper away. Now she is naked. Nothing but her breath and his, now. The fire crackles in its jet-black maw. 

“Come. Here.” Kylo manages to grate.

She does. Lightly. Without hesitation. She steps to him and molds herself along the ridges of his body. Before he can wonder if this is a trap (if he thinks about it, he’s never really bested her) he grabs her hip and palms her throat with his other hand so he can feel her racing pulse through his glove. Even through the leather it batters at him, fluttering like a trapped bird. His own pulse drums in his ears, in his core, as he moves to touch her between her legs.

As he cups her sex, pressing with the heel of his hand, her mouth parts under his, all surrender. 

“Rey…” he groans. He finds her delicate little slit, stroking her back and forth until she eases open. His fingers dip into her. One. Two. His thumb on her clit, circling slowly. In a moment he moves his damp fingers to her nipple, coating it with her wetness before he sucks at the taste. When she gasps, finally aware just how basely he wants her, he forces those slicked, gloved fingers into her mouth.

She resists for a moment. She can taste herself now and he can sense her confusion at the forbidden act. But she’s curious. If stray sparks of Light still exist in him, then are hidden fissures of Darkness in her. After a moment, she pulls his hips into hers, and Kylo stifles a raw moan as she starts to suck him.

Index finger. Middle finger. One at a time, then both together. Her mouth is warm, her cheeks hollowing. He could come like this, if he weren’t so greedy. After a moment he withdraws and strips the gloves off so he can touch her with his bare hands. He molds her against him, close, so close, and kisses her deeply as he undoes her messy chignon. Whatever he’s done to her with the Force has made her excruciatingly pliable. She falls, like her hair does, deep into his arms, melting to him with shallow little gasps. When she tugs at the high collar of his doublet it’s so weak and flighty he almost feels guilty. He kisses her wrist—because he wants to, but also to check: has he drained her too much? These languorous motions are…different. But, no, she’s all right. She’s just…yielding.

“Let me,” she says softly. That patrician accent of hers. She’ll never know how much he hungers just to hear her _speak_. She manages to undo the small buttons at his throat and he backs off a bit, helping her do the rest. Soon she’s shoving the doublet off his shoulders, down his arms, their feet trampling it as she tugs his wide belt. He grips her waist and they make it to the bed, fighting battles with his boots and his increasingly tight trousers. He almost screams when she gets the belt off him and gropes past his waistband at his aching sex. He tears her hand away, smashes her wrist against the mattress and writhes out of the rest of his clothes on his own. He wants something very particular from her. He will not—he _cannot_ —be denied.

He grips her ass and pulls her towards him across the bed until he’s kneeling between her slightly parted thighs.

Has any man ever tasted her as he does now, brushing her open with his mouth? From her high-pitched gasp he guesses not. No man has ever traced her sweet folds with their tongue until she glistens and seeps with secret moisture. No man has slid their stiffened fingers into her wetness and moved them in and out of her until her body starts to shake. No man has ever sealed his mouth to her like and used the suction to drive her higher, higher….

No man has ever risked his soul beyond the galaxy’s edge and returned to her, bearing with him her name.

She’s trying to get away from him now. Not from the pleasure. Just the merciless bent of his thought. In his passion he’s losing control of their bond and she can read every thought, every image in his mind. She can even feel what’s he’s feeling: the heat of the fire as it licks his body, the satisfaction he takes in his power over her, the icy shivers that lance him with her every cry—and his hardness as he juts out, ridiculous and painful.

He seizes her hips as she tries to squirm away and fucks her with his mouth, his face, his mind. When she comes for him the taste is slick and golden. He sucks and smears her juices as she melts.

While she’s still coming, spasming, crying out, one hand working shamelessly between her legs, he rises up and sheathes himself in her tight little snatch, hardly able to breathe—or to think beyond the taste of her.

But he _can_ think, somewhere, someplace in time, and he’s saved the best of his tricks for the last. He lets go the last semblance of control and lets everything Mortis showed him flow into her. Not only her name. Not only the temple or the throne, black and white, that crowns the inner sanctum. He gives her also their fate and their future. Their days and nights and the power they will wield. He gives her a new world—one they make together, where every wrong is addressed, and every hurt atoned for. A world where the Force bends to their will and they live forever, keeping its unruly balance. He gives her their loves and their wars and their lusts. Their tears and their pain and their vast, unvanquishable power. A world beyond flesh. Beyond moments or thinking. A world where they _are_.

And she is… 

And he is…

###

Rey has never been so fucked in her life. She wants to laugh at the entendre, but it’s true. What the kriff is she doing here before this fire—letting him burn her down and incinerate the ashes?

No. Wait. She knows. She won’t lie to herself.

What she really wonders, as her wetness slicks the sheets, as she comes apart for him like something dropped and shattered, is why this submission feels so right. Feels like the key to everything?

Maybe she’s just deluding herself. Maybe, as he says, he’s already won. She _is_ weak. Her body is one slow burn. She can barely think beyond his touch—or the scorching vistas in her mind.

_We can rule together_ , he is telling her as he fucks her. _We can bring balance to the Force._

She sees the throne on Mortis. Sees herself on Kylo’s arm. He wears black, of course—and she’s in starry white. It hurts to look at her own sharp beauty, magnified by their power into viciousness. _He’s_ the one she can stand to look at. The less terrifying of the pair. Pale and shadowed, hair like night. A balance in and of himself. He seems regal, standing next to her. Like he was born for this. 

Like he’s at peace.

Somehow that hurts more than anything. That peace is possible, but only on his terms. It will be a brittle peace at best, she knows, as their imagined avatars descend from their monstrous dais. Brittle as anything you’ve set on fire and then tried to reconstruct to its previous purpose. The cries of their subjects as he leads her down the stairs are the same that come from her own gasping mouth. The rule of the Young Emperor and his bride will be as sweetly cruel as everything he’s doing to her now.

_Balance_ , he insists. Now his mouth is gone. It’s his cock driving into her, making her scream. _Balance. Power. We can have it. But you have to accept who you really are._

The starry white goddess flashes before her. This is what she could be. But it’s not who she _is_. Not really—though she’s a divided person. Like Ben. Like Kylo. A dyad within a dyad. In a way, they’ve already balanced the Force—the way a broken ship balances before cracking in half. He’ll balance the Force by breaking _everything_. Is there not some way, instead, that they can be whole?

“Join me,” he’s panting (begging) her, the way he nearly begged her three years before. “Join me. Come for me. Come _with_ me…” 

His need of her has always been his weakness. 

_Need._ Her hips rise to meet him. He feels so good, so deliciously huge. _Needing to belong. Belonging is before us. The past is dead. The past is_ death _…_

She starts to come again, in time with revelation: _We must create something different than what came before._

Creation is the key to this. To take the broken things and repair—make new.

_Rey Solana,_ she thinks. The Force has a sense of humor. The name that Mortis gave Kylo as bait, is a trap. He’s spent enormous power exploiting it—only to fall headlong into its fire.

As he comes in her, his mind and body crumbling, seed molten and he pulses in her aching cunt, she gived him as much Light as she safely can—dispelling the Darkness he has held to so long.

“Do you know what Solana means?” she whispers, locking her legs around him as he tries to recoil. “It means ‘the sunny side of a mountain.’ _I_ am the light inside you. _Ben_.”

He makes some shivery, non-committal sound. Too spent to stop her as she takes his mind.

She sends him an image of what could be. Of a joining. Much like the one they’ve just had. But the difference matters: as long as they fight each other, as long as the Balance is unfulfilled, their joining will be broken. 

So: beyond crowns and thrones and domination, Rey shows him a way they might agree.

_Belonging_ , she whispers to his fractured soul. _Be with me. Let two become one._

Kylo falls against her with a sob. The vision she shows him isn’t as grandiose as his, but she knows that he hungers for it even more:

_A mother. A father. An infant child with her father’s dark hair and her mother’s golden eyes. All the power of the Force resides within her. Perfectly balanced. Perfectly loved. They will cherish her, and each other, as they will the years of peace ahead._

“No…” Kylo sobs. But not in denial. It hurts when old wounds start to heal. Rey combs her fingers through his silken hair and, as her spreading Light puts him to sleep, pulls the sheets around them both. 

###

She takes her time, holding him. Breathing slowly. Regaining her strength for the journey ahead. 

###

Only after an hour does she slip from the bed to purge his seed and go about finding her clothes.

Perhaps she’s only imagining things, but she seems stronger now. The Light quickening inside her.

She pauses once to kiss the top of his head.

“Sleep well, Ben,” she says. “I’ll see you on Mortis.”

_Fin._


End file.
